


you're a squib, georgie

by watername



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 00:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20023165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watername/pseuds/watername
Summary: “Well, well. A little Squib has made its way here.”“Yeah, right up your bum,” George Weasley responds, grumbling as the Sorting Hat slips down over his head. “Lucky me.”





	you're a squib, georgie

At three years old, Fred Weasley toddles to the end of the table, small hands reaching up to the wand his mother just placed down a moment ago. His brother, George, comes up beside him, his shoulder becoming Fred’s support as he goes to his toes. He nearly tips over, but the wand comes with him. It falls with a clatter between the two.

George drops down, quick to reach it first, just in the moments before Fred does the same. They both grab at it, their small fingers pattering against each other.

“It’s warm!” Fred says with delight.

“It’s cold,” George says, frowning. Nothing’s ever been different between the two of them before.

His mother’s wand feels no different than the table that covers them, but then Fred points it up, and the table goes flying above them.

“Fred! George!” their mother shrieks.

Fred giggles, and scoots backwards, wand clutched in his chubby fist.

* * *

The spare broom is shaking between George’s legs, as he tips off. He jerks forward, towards a whooping Bill and a pale Percy, who’s been roped in with Charlie absent, out traveling with the Lovegoods for dragon talk. Fred’s just back behind his left shoulder, muttering confidentially.

“Perce doesn’t stand a chance, does he, Georgie?”

George considers his older brothers’ faces, Bill’s tightwire confidence as he circles lazily. His wand is out, easily charming the heavy spare ball into a more Quaffle-standard weight. Percy is sneaking glances at his charmwork, for moments at a time until he remembers his nerves. His broom is periodically sinking towards the ground, even though Bill had insisted Percy get the most reliable of them. His wand is still shiny and new from Ollivander’s, the subject of obnoxious boasting.

“First one to knock him off gets a Chocolate Frog.”

“Deal.”

* * *

It’s always Fred and George, never just Fred, never just George. The mischief they wreck is theirs.

And who’s to say which one it is that takes Percy’s wand, and makes the pumpkins explode when little Ronniekins tries to lug one inside for Halloween?

And who’s to say which one it is whose clever, nonmagical fingers undo their father’s locked shed, and who turns the key in the Ford Anglia?

* * *

“Well, well. A little Squib has made its way here.”

“Yeah, right up your bum,” George responds, grumbling as the Sorting Hat slips down over his head. “Lucky me.”

“Lucky you indeed.” The hat _hrmphs_ in his ear. “The impertinence of it all. Your brothers were all quite magical, I’m sure of it. Being at Hogwarts won’t change who you are, boy.”

George finds Fred, seated comfortably and expectantly for him at the Gryffindor table. Charlie waves from beside him, his prefect’s badge shining in the candlelight.

“Are you done yet? I’m going to Gryffindor.”

“ _Are_ you? I may be just a hat, but nothing’s stopping me from making a fuss about this, you know. Get you tossed out and sent home. Is your whole family conspiring on this? No shame to be brought to such a magical lineage, bringing them to such lengths?”

George snorts.

“Right then,” the Hat clears its throat. “Such boldness, such recklessness. Right you are, young man.”

“GRYFFINDOR!” it roars to the crowd, and George roars back, victorious.

* * *

“Really, Mr. Weasley, I expect better of you. Your brothers – “

“Professor, really, you can’t blame George for this,” Fred says, solemn-eyed. Professor McGonagall eyes him back across her desk, the remnants of their final exam still faintly smoking. “He’s a Squib, you see.”

“Outrageous lies do not become this house, Mr. Weasley,” she responds archly. “You will both re-take your exams this Friday. As this is when the rest of your classmates will be boarding the train, your parents have already been informed and will be travelling in to pick you up. At that time, we will be having an extensive conversation about your inability to take your schooling seriously.”

“Oh, we take it very seriously,” George says with a grin. His wand rolls between his fingers, as cold as it was the day he bought it. “Just performance anxiety.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this, Georgie?” Fred asks, uncharacteristic concern on his face. The Marauder’s Map lays open in front of them. Sylvia Headley is pacing back and forth beneath George’s right thumb, inside the fourth greenhouse. Terrence Cowell, the lovestruck sop, is approaching in quick steps that stutter to a stop every few moments.

George looks over it, committing it all to memory. The marauders were no fools. If they wanted to make the map Squib-proof, it’d look like nothing to him, an empty sheet of parchment ripe for throwing out.

“Of course,” he says. Something releases in his throat as he pulls his thumb away, and Terrence and Sylvia embrace each other. “No one needs this more.”

Fred folds it back up, and wraps an arm around him briefly. Harry will be in the courtyard any moment.

* * *

An Aging Potion is easy enough to whip up. George brews it behind the statue of Waller the Wall-Eyed on the third floor corridor, the extra blowfly or two nicked from Snape’s cupboards left in between the long-dead wizard’s toes.

It’s just a wing or two that goes into the actual potion, but George swears he can still feel it, that he’s going to spew enough wings to fly as Madam Pomfrey takes a pair of clippers to his face. Fred sits beside him, newly cleanshaven.

“Almost got away with it, didn’t we?” he says, pride apparent in his voice.

George closes his eyes, and thinks of all the spells Fred has cast for both of them, and the warmth of a potion bottle between his hand, the liquid inside brewed by him and him alone.

“Almost.”

* * *

Muggle Studies is like listening to his father in the Ford Anglia, if female and more composed. Professor Burbage talks excitedly about Muggle ways, the innovative thinking that goes into how they redirect water from rivers and oceans, the absolutely corking way they go about in automobiles that rarely crash into each other, even though there’s more of them every year.

She has a section on Squibs every year, or so George hears, before he takes it as an elective seventh-year.

_“Hem-hem.”_

“Yes, Headmaster?” Professor Burbage stops mid-sentence, her chalk still working its way through a simple diagram of something called a ‘food bank’. Some kind of communal altruism, George has gathered, though it seems incredibly inefficient without the use of transfiguration.

He’s one to talk, though.

“I _do_ wonder at some of your word choices, Charity,” Umbridge steps towards the front of the room. “Why, it seems I just heard you describe Muggles as ‘good-hearted’.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Professor Burbage says. Her chalk moves swiftly to the head of the diagram, towards a figure holding a bag of – George wants to say bread, but it certainly looks like something else to him entirely. “Many of these organizations are held together with little funds, and, obviously, no magic, but they still distribute food to the disadvantaged! Some would find it astonishing, but I would encourage this class to consider their own families, and the lengths they have gone to to help others, perhaps those with lesser magical abilities. Squibs, for instance – “

“ _HEM_ ,” Umbridge interjects. “Are you not aware of our latest educational degree, Charity?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Educational Decree Number 23,” she draws out her wand. “’No non-magical creature may be compared favorably or of equal standing to a witch or wizard.’ We don’t want our students to think they are less than what they are, now do we?”

Her giggle is nearly masked by Fred’s hissing warning in his ear.

“Don’t do anything.”

“What am I going to do?” he murmurs back. “Curse her?”

Professor Burbage’s face is a tight mask as she eventually nods. Umbridge sweeps out, her nose held high.

* * *

“So….Verity?” George asks the young woman standing in front of their counterspace. “What makes you want to work at the imminent scion of Diagon Alley, Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes?”

“I need a job.”

“Ah,” Fred nods sagely. “Economics.”

“Tragic,” George adds.

“Very.”

“And – “ Verity begins to add, looking around conspiratorially. “My little sister is at Hogwarts, and she told me you two set off firecrackers before cursing Umbridge with a pig’s nose.”

“Sadly, not true,” Fred says. George sighs, shaking his head in mournful confirmation. “That was nature’s curse, not us.”

“The fireworks, though – “

“Those we will take credit for.”

Verity smiles, wide and pleased.

“I’d love to work with two such wizards.”

George claps his hands together, his grin stretching wide across his face.

“Lovely. Now, you’ll just be working with _one_ such wizard today. Fred, would you show her the storeroom?”

* * *

“Now, Rapier,” Lee’s voice crackles across the line. “What sort of reports do we have on this fine evening?”

“Not such a fine evening, I’m afraid. There’s a light sprinkling of Death Eaters falling across the East End reported, with an increased presence that’s predicted to move towards Kent. So, our condolences for living in Kent.”

“Yes, indeed. Now, if you don’t mind, River, I’d like to take an extra moment tonight.”

“It depends, Rapier. What’s on your mind?”

George takes a deep drink. Fred lays his hand on his arm, as he moves back to the magicked microphone.

“Now, I want all our listeners to perk up their ears – or ear, in some of our less fortunate cases – and pay attention to everything going on around you. Some of you may think you’re safe because you’ve never been in trouble before. Some of you may be hoping these are all hysterics, and all these troubles will go away before they ever touch you.”

“Maybe you’ll be lucky, but your neighbor won’t, because their mother fought Death Eaters in the first War. Or your cousin, who’s married to a half-blood. Or the Muggle who lives down the road, who’s always railing about your flowers being in bloom because you gave them a little kick, eh? They are not safe tonight.”

“Or maybe there’s a Squib in your family. Make no mistake,” he clears his throat. “A Squib is just another Muggle to Death Eaters, no matter what they know about the wizarding world.”

“Keep your eyes open. These people are all around you. If you swung your head around once in a while, you’d see them.”

* * *

If only he’d had a wand that worked –

If only _he had magic_ –

Fred lies on the floor. His wand is finally warm to George’s touch, slick with blood.

* * *

“I’m a Squib,” he says to Ron, the first day his younger brother comes to work.

“Come off it,” he grumbles. “Let me at least eat something before you start with that.”

He pounds up the stairs after him, pulling out his wand. He still remembers getting it from Ollivander’s - Fred’s insistence to the shop clerk that he had already tried that one, couldn’t they tell them apart – and has a certain fondness for it, as useless as it has been to him.

“Look,” he says, throwing himself in his path. He holds his wand out between them, and snaps it in two.

“Bloody hell, what are you thinking?” Ron yells. “ _Accio Spellotape_.”

The Spellotape comes in flying over George’s shoulder, and Ron is grabbing the broken pieces of the wand and trying to jam them together.

“Fred did all the wandwork for both of us,” he explains. Ron looks glancingly up at him, anger apparent in his face. “I was good at potions, though. Thought Snape almost caught onto me once or twice, but if he did he held onto that one too long to do anything with it, being dead and all.”

“You can knock it off,” he says as he comes back up. He shoves George’s salvaged wand back at him, his clearly upset touch sparking off small bursts of flame from the tip of it. “I’ve seen you do magic.”

“You haven’t,” George says. “Every time Fred and I couldn’t be together, he’d swap out with me. Or we’d set loose some toads and he'd transfigure for me while McGonagall cleaned it up. Herbology, Ronniekins? How many times did you use your wand outside of Charms and Transfiguration?”

Ron’s face is slowly changing from anger to concern, and George holds up a hand to the empty space by his temple.

“My brain’s not gone dribbling out my head. You never saw a Squib because you didn’t want to see one.”

“Blimey,” Ron says. “You’re being serious?”

George grins. It pulls at the new skin at the edge of his jaw. He lets his wand fall to the floor, and puts his foot over it, feels it shatter again beneath him. 

“Just this once, baby brother. There’s nothing else for it.”

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written hp fic in approximately....4 years. i blame camp nano desperation.


End file.
